Keep your followers engaged

You already know how you can gain more followers on Instagram, right? If not, you should consider visiting the following webpage: https://projectinsta.com/instagram-tips-and-tricks/. Now, it is time to explore how you can keep your precious audience engaged in your posts!

So, how do you beat the Instagram algorithm to have more engagement from your audience? Okay, you can’t really beat it but you definitely can join forces with it. By understanding how the algorithm works, you can utilize certain features of Instagram in order to increase engagement so that you boost those likes and comments and keep your precious followers glued to your content. Before proceeding anywhere, the first thing you need to understand is: What is the Instagram algorithm and how does it work? In short the algorithm is an AI system. Okay, that doesn’t explain much! It is basically a computer program that is designed to track all your activities and is ever changing. What is interesting is by the time you read this article, a lot might have changed. Nonetheless, right now it is highly relevant as these changes happen gradually. The algorithm is always tracking what you and your fans are posting and liking and through a mathematical formula (which is supposed to be a secret!) presents everyone with posts relevant to them. For instance, if you have the tendency of liking or commenting on content related to cars, when you visit your explore page you are probably going to see even more cars. When the algorithm sees you interacting with something particular, it favors that to your feed even though you might not be following the pages that post them. If you do the right things that cater to Instagram’s needs, you will see your followers being more interested in your posts than ever before. Lets explore these one at a time:

1) Content is King!

Back in the day, when you posted something on Instagram it used to go on top of the newsfeed of all your followers. When one day Instagram said, ‘Okay, we are going to show the posts we think your followers are going to like.’ Everyone’s engagement went down faster than a rolling ball down the stairway as most of the content stopped even showing up for many of their followers. People aren’t going to watch what you are posting if it doesn’t grab their attention. Now that we have outlined the basics of how the algorithm works, you know how important it is to focus on quality than on quantity.

2) Landscape versus Portrait

First and foremost, use the app the way it is designed to be used. When you post a photo or a video on Instagram, it is always going to have the same width, and that being the user’s phone, unless of course you do some extra editing and add some white space instead. However, what’s going to be different is its height. What’s important to understand here is the more space you can take up on the platform – the better it is. No matter how much you like your landscape images and videos, remember, that almost everyone uses the app on their phone and not on their computer. And portrait shots on the phone are almost always going to perform better than landscape shots.

3) Captions and calls to actions

How can you engage people in your content even if they are not really willing to? That’s right, you ask for it! You have a caption like, ‘I am at the Louvre!’ Well, good for you. However, if you add a question, like, ‘Did any of you know the Mona Lisa painting is so small?’ or tag a friend you had a discussion with about the museum, you would drive a lot more self-drive engagement. Once you have a few number of people liking or commenting on your content in the first few minutes after you posted it, you will have a lot more coming soon. Ever seen those big pages posting content with bad grammar in captions? Well, we have a lot of Grammar Nazis out there in the wilds of the internet who would be quick enough to comment the corrections. Who knows, maybe it is done on purpose!

4) Research Hashtags

Lets say your content ends up performing well and it is for a certain hashtag. Once people search that particular hashtag, there is a good chance they might see your post too.

5) Always add geo-location

Just like hashtags, people might reach your post through the locations they search. Very often, when people see new and unique places for the first time, they tend to click the location to see more. If you were lucky to be in that place that got someone excited, you might be luckier when your picture of that place ends up in his or her location search results. The only thing you need to do is remember to add location to your post.

6) Utilizing stories and lives

Think about it, Instagram wants to keep users on their platform for as long as possible. To do that, it must show its users the content most relevant to them. Since the number of general posts are a lot more than stories and live posts, there is a chance someone might notice your story or live stream. You might have noticed people asking their followers to see the posts they have posted on their profile utilizing stories and lives.

7) Collaborate

You probably might have heard about engagement groups where a lot of pages get together to like each other’s stuff. Well, this is might work for the time being but sooner or later Instagram might change the algorithm as this is not organic. However, if your posts get liked by pages that are authentic and just don’t go on liking every post and page here and there, you should have a boost in your engagement. Tagging each other’s page through different posts will also have a positive boost for you.

8) Right timing

There are times when the platform isn’t as active as usual. For most instances, it is at night. If you wish to post something in the middle of the night, well, its hardly unlikely many people are going to see it.

Conclusion

So, those are just a few ways to boost your engagement. One thing we have not discussed so far is the importance of being consistent with your posts. Rest assured, if you follow the rules and experiment with them occasionally, you are bound to have a nice engagement. Good Luck!

Hmmmm. These may sound easy but totally hard to do. Collaboration is good but getting people who share similar interests to collaborate is another game. Then when you are consistent enough, you also have to be careful not to overwhelm some followers.

Content is king, yeah. But I’ll advise you don’t have lengthy contents that may easily bore your audience. It’s pointless having a good image only to have people bounce out because they find the content irrelevant or something.

If only people would make good use of the power of hashtags. They can actually give you the exposure and even followers you need. Simply understand the trends and once I a while, make posts that are related.